This PhD candidate in the African-American Studies Department at Yale University is also the assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum. She has produced the “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” exhibit at the museum, scheduled to open on September 15.

Richardson, the 2018 National Miss Black America, is currently the VP of marketing at Victor, the global leader in private jet charter technology. An advocate for diversity and inclusion in business and technology, while previously at Uber, she designed the company’s first wide-reaching multicultural marketing strategy and activated their presence at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Majoring in biomedical engineering as a freshman at McMaster University, Harris won the $70,000 TD Scholarship for Community Leadership because she founded the first Black Students Association at Cawthra Park Secondary School in Southeast Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

These 11th graders from Washington, D.C., won second place in this year's NASA OSPARC competition — and were targeted by voting hackers because of their race and gender. Their story and project inspired a GoFundMe campaign to raise $20,000 for teens to study various sciences.

Ayres, a community organizer, ran for city council in Columbus, Ohio, in 2017. Though defeated in the general election, she continues her outreach for safer communities, education, economic equality and criminal justice. She is surely on the road to holding some form of government office one day.

Bryant is the high school student who, in 2016, wrote the city council of Charlottesville, Virginia, to “change the name of Lee Park and remove the statue,” igniting the widespread discourse on whether or not statues of historic vanguards of systemic racism should remain in public places.

A licensed psychotherapist and wellness writer, Minaa B. founded The Literary Social online book and writing club. Her book, Rivers Are Coming, is a collection of essays and poems about healing from trauma and depression. She is a self-proclaimed "overcomer and warrior at heart" and wants to help others be the same.

Blay, a senior culture writer at The Huffington Post, published the May 2016 article "5 Things I've Learned as a Black Woman With Depression: It's OK to Not Be OK," removing the stigma from having depression, anxiety and bipolar II disorder and helping others who have been similarly diagnosed to not feel so isolated.